Earth Day Experiment: My Plastic Inventory

Earth Day Experiment: My Plastic Inventory

Posted on April 12, 2011

For Earth Day next week, I decided to do a personal inventory of the amount of plastic in my daily life. I l kept it simple and didn’t include things related to having two young children (it’d seriously skew the number). I only counted plastic containers, products or pieces of plastic I consumed or touched as part of my day. I kept a Daily Plastic Tally for 5 whole days. And the results? It isn’t pretty – on an average day I touch 53 plastic products (the range went from 34 to 76). Here’s my average list of things:

Alarm clock

Shampoo bottle

Soap holder

Razor

Moisturizer

Sunscreen

Deodorant

Toothbrush

Toothpaste

Dental floss container

Trashcan

Hairdryer

Hair products

Medicine container

Make up pods

Lip balm

Cereal liner

Milk carton

Toaster (plastic lever)

Yogurt cup

Dried fruit container

Hot water kettle (for tea)

iPhone case

iPhone charger (wires are coated in plastic and the charging base is plastic)

Credit cards (made of plastic)

Car (so many parts are made of PVCs and other plastics)

Hand sanitizer

Tissue soft pack

Desktop screen

Keyboard

Desk phone

Pen

Presentation remote

Elevator button

Bread bag

Deli meat container

Condiment jar

Refrigerator

Snack zip-top bag

Frozen vegetable bags

Food packaging

Radio/CD player

Light switches

DVD case

TV Remote control

TV

Camera (I take pictures nearly every day with a digital SLR, but the body is mostly plastic)

To be fair, plastic is unavoidable in certain things and in some ways it can reduce the weight of products or increase the convenience. But as I kept tallying – day after day – I kept realizing I could make better choices and cut down on the plastic in my life. For the last 36 days, I’ve been tweeting the 1 green thing (see #my1greenthing) and challenging myself to make an effort to be better for my health and the environment. Thankfully my water bottle is glass with silicone grippers and cap and I switched to glass food storage containers. Small changes add up.

So what do you think? Or better still send me your Daily Plastics Number and any tips you have to cut down on the plastic.